SMTP Service Required... obviously cheap as this is MSE!

PasturesNew

So, I have a site, it has members that joined... there are ... to put it mildly ... rather a few of them.

Anyway, host's just got right pee'd off at me as I'm on a shared server blah blah blah (IIS) and I sent out my first emails last night to my (legal/double opt in) peeps ... and it only took 10 hours, so I was impressed.... then the trouble started.

A lot of the day my site's been down.
I've had to keep recycling the application pool (every 2 minutes from 9-11am this morning), just to try to keep it limping along

On speaking with my host ... who I am sure are laughing at this really ... I have to move my mailing service. So, I am looking for somewhere affordable to move to that will provide me with SMTP services. I don't mind a capped service, so long as the cap is no lower than 500/hour.

At the moment, my current host's capped speed would take me a month to send one itsy bitsy email to all my members.

Host is, of course, not interested - and their only solution is to buy into their super duper dedicated server ... $450/month (yeah right!). I don't know the value of my list, but I'm sure I couldn't squeeze that much out of it per month - at least, I'm not prepared to take that gamble.

Current host caps outgoing at 200/hour, 1000/day.

So ... anybody know of an SMTP services provider so I can just type in the SMTP host details in my admin module and it'll all just go tickety boo?

(P.S. don't talk about aweber or similar services, I tried them and really didn't get any support in trying to get my list over to them ... and they were unresponsive and after 3 years of getting nowhere with them/not being able to use the service, I cancelled it).

So .... any ideas?

I don't want to change hosts because I only changed hosts last month after my site being down over 2 weeks with the previous shower.

It's really not my year

Shermanator

500 mails per hour is a lot of mail. I deal with a lot of businesses and there mail servers and this is pretty high volume.

There is always the option of hosting an SMTP service yourself, but with that volume of mail there is a string chance you will be blacklisted and it will also throttle your line. But if it is a burst of 500 mails 1 hour and then nothing for the next few hours you may be ok.

PasturesNew

Shermanator wrote: »

500 mails per hour is a lot of mail. I deal with a lot of businesses and there mail servers and this is pretty high volume.

There is always the option of hosting an SMTP service yourself, but with that volume of mail there is a string chance you will be blacklisted and it will also throttle your line. But if it is a burst of 500 mails 1 hour and then nothing for the next few hours you may be ok.

My little list is over 26,000. Although bounces should strip that down to a manageable 20,000 .... but once the list size is under control then it'll still grow.

I think I am going to have to suck it up at 1000/day and just leave it at that. Site's been going up/down like a t4rt's drawers all day. Host can only suggest that I take on a dedicated server etc etc ... at $450/month, so that's no doable.

Cheers for replying.

It's only a little list - and, if anybody has a website and doesn't have that number on their mailing list, then I wonder what on earth they do with their time

ehlo

There are various services that offer this, but most are probably more expensive than a dedicated server as they are intended for much larger mailing lists and have agreements with all major providers to prevent mail from them being seen as spam.

I see a few other options:

-- Limit the software to only send a certain number of e-mails per hour. Is it essential that people receive it straight away? Certainly on Linux based hosting this is very easy as it can be setup with a cron job (aka scheduled task on Windows)
-- Get a VPS which will be cheaper than a dedicated server and doesn't have mail limits because you can control everything on it. There are many providers of both managed and unmanaged VPS' depending on how hands on you want to get
-- You can take a look at some professional e-mail providers on http://www.emaildiscussions.com/index.php but I'd be surprised if any allow you to send such a large number of e-mails

Hope this helps

Edit: If you haven't already check out Webhostingtalk. This is probably the largest hosting related forum and questions similar to yours are posted fairly frequently

PasturesNew

ehlo wrote: »

There are various services that offer this, but most are probably more expensive than a dedicated server as they are intended for much larger mailing lists and have agreements with all major providers to prevent mail from them being seen as spam.

I see a few other options:

-- Limit the software to only send a certain number of e-mails per hour. Is it essential that people receive it straight away? Certainly on Linux based hosting this is very easy as it can be setup with a cron job (aka scheduled task on Windows)
-- Get a VPS which will be cheaper than a dedicated server and doesn't have mail limits because you can control everything on it. There are many providers of both managed and unmanaged VPS' depending on how hands on you want to get
-- You can take a look at some professional e-mail providers on http://www.emaildiscussions.com/index.php but I'd be surprised if any allow you to send such a large number of e-mails

Hope this helps

Well, sending out the emails isn't what I am interested in ... I don't want to be faffing with technical stuff... I want to be scribbling on my little website.

Surely I can't have the biggest list in the world? I've not actively sought members to join my list, they just came and joined because I said "join".

There must be thousands of people just like me, running little sites here and there, that can't get mail sent. It's nuts really.

I am not sure if the module allows me to send the emails in groups - I'm asking the developer, but I think they said they tried and couldn't get that to work. My previous host throttled it back by default, so I would press "send" and their system just prevented me from sending it all straight away. This host seems to have allowed it as it only took 10 hours to get to 100% sent.

The thing is, at 1000/day limit, it'll take a month to send them all out. Which isn't ideal as I can never talk about "today" or "this week" or "now" in the newsletter.... because they'll all receive it on different days of the month. It's just an unexpected pain, when I keep thinking I've finally got a solution .... it just fails to work as planned.

Shermanator

I am intrigued - whats the website??

ehlo

If you don't mind me asking, what software are you using?
Also how much are you paying per month? You could probably move the whole site to a VPS which would probably be similar in price to using current hosting + separate e-mail service. A decent spec VPS could probably send the e-mails out in just a few hours

PasturesNew

Shermanator wrote: »

I am intrigued - whats the website??

Ha ha... nothing much. I just happen to score nicely in Google and people came ... and I happened to say "join" and the f3ckers did. To be honest, I was kind of gobsmacked when the first one did.... in 2006.

I probably get 25 sign ups/day, it just trundles away. Google sends me people, I make a few quid, people join... we all get on with our lives. But, obviously, theoretically "the money's in the list", which was why I wanted people to join from day 1. Only the money's only in the list if you can email them - and as I have no idea how much money's in the list I can't afford to risk throwing money at it just in case. I'd guess that my mailing list might make me, say, £20 per send. So, to pay for a service at £300/month, to make £80/month potentially ... doesn't seem worth it. On the other hand, if I had the service, then, over time, maybe there's more money in the list, and I could improve my techniques to generate money from it. But it's a big investment in something that's hit and miss.

If I had £300/month spare I could find a lot better ways of spending it. But, at the moment, with other hosting/domain fees etc, that's probably half of what's left over, so it'd be a massive financial risk (e.g. having an income of £300/month instead of £600-800).

Rock ... meet hard place.

So, I probably need now to find out a way of throttling the SENDing. No idea why my host didn't automatically throttle it back by default! And then I can at least send out one communication per month (a simple: hey, come back, we've got !!!!!! you might be interested in). Then I can monitor the stats/see how it goes, guesstimate if there's any increase in income, then maybe in a year or so I'll be able to evaluate if a higher costing service is justified.

At the moment, without being able to send email on demand, it's not even of any use to sell advertising space in the newsletter to anybody paying a decent penny, because of the lag in sending.

edgex

PasturesNew wrote: »

My little list is over 26,000. Although bounces should strip that down to a manageable 20,000 .... but once the list size is under control then it'll still grow.

I think I am going to have to suck it up at 1000/day and just leave it at that. Site's been going up/down like a t4rt's drawers all day. Host can only suggest that I take on a dedicated server etc etc ... at $450/month, so that's no doable.

Cheers for replying.

It's only a little list - and, if anybody has a website and doesn't have that number on their mailing list, then I wonder what on earth they do with their time

thats not a little list!


does it have to be email?

PasturesNew

ehlo wrote: »

If you don't mind me asking, what software are you using?
Also how much are you paying per month? You could probably move the whole site to a VPS which would probably be similar in price to using current hosting + separate e-mail service. A decent spec VPS could probably send the e-mails out in just a few hours

I've got a DotNetNuke site (wish I'd never heard of it now!), with an extra Bulk Mail module from Interactive in Australia. The module's sweet because I've actually managed to install it, configure it - and it works. It does stuff like manages the bounce backs and the unsubscribes automatically, which was needed obviously.

Not sure how much I'm paying at the moment - just moved hosts a month ago and a figure that comes to mind is $300/year for DNN hosting on a shared server.

No idea what a VPS means/is.

PasturesNew

edgex wrote: »

thats not a little list!


does it have to be email?

Well, I'd expect most people to have a good sized list. It's not like I worked hard to get that one. All double opt-in etc.

"Does it have to be email?" ... er ... what other choices are there?